Howard Gardner is the originator of the concept of multiple intelligence. In this book, Gardner discusses the many ways that people are bright. His descriptions of many of the types of intelligence are fascinating. Interestingly, he often discarded IQ as a correlator to personal achievement and success. Although he doesn't have a lot of research to back-up his concepts, he does have a very interesting perspective on the types of aptitudes and intelligences that lead to top tier performance in any area.

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Goleman argues that top performance is tied much more to our emotional intelligence than the standard IQ type intelligence. He argues that things like postponement, delayed gratification, etc. are truly the correlators to sales success, not whether you have a 125 IQ or 105 IQ. Emotional Intelligence is an extremely popular book today. Many of its points are clearly valid with regards to sales performance.

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The Creative Spirit is a fun look at the way human beings create. Since the act of selling is a creative act in itself (the act of consistently creating new customers and opportunities), it is a worthwhile read. Kaufman describes several types of creative aptitudes that he feels lead to highly creative individuals. Many of these creative aptitudes seem to correlate highly with sales success.

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Stoltz argues that how one handles adversity is clearly the key to personal achievement and success. Clearly, top salespeople score high in his adversity quotient test. Overall, this book explains why some salespeople fail or quit and why others persevere in a situation. Overall, this book is a solid read for anyone interested in personal sales mastery and effectiveness.

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